The Woodworker

by Westlake, Samantha

  “Great.” He pulled open the door to his fridge, began taking out things and handing them to me. I looked down at them as I transferred them to the counter, feeling already out of my depth. A package of fresh chicken breasts. Carrots, celery, an onion. A container of chicken stock. A bottle of red wine – now this seemed more fitting.

  “That’s not for drinking,” Rick said, his head still inside the fridge, as I turned over the bottle to see the grape varietal.

  “What? Then what’s it for?”

  “Cooking. It’s the cheap stuff, anyway.”

  “Like that’s ever stopped me – or any of the girls you probably bring back here,” I muttered, but I set the bottle of red wine aside, with the other ingredients.

  Closing the door to the refrigerator, Rick frowned at me. “Can I trust you with cutting up raw meat?”

  “Of course you can!” I countered hotly, but then paused. “Although, maybe, just to be safe, I should start with something easier?”

  That made him laugh, a short bark, before he clamped down on it. “Start with peeling the carrots,” he said, handing me the offending vegetables and a handheld peeler.

  “So,” I said, as I began running the peeler over the carrots to take off slivers of skin, “any thought about letting me help with your woodworking?”

  “What are you thinking of doing?”

  I’d been considering the question all afternoon, so I had an answer ready. “Well, first I want to set up some basic web presence. Give you a website, list some works of yours on there, provide a way for people to find you. After that, I’d like to try and find some organic methods of driving traffic to it – if you’ve got some good pictures of your pieces, we can share them online and try to drive more interest. Eventually, we’ll need to create an online shop, but that can come a little later.”

  “Uh huh.” His back was to me as he cut up the chicken breasts. He reached down and pulled a saucepan out of a cupboard, put it on the stove. I waited as he threw a pat of butter onto the pan, let it melt, and then added the celery and onion. How had he already found the time to dice those?

  “Carrots,” he said, taking the peeled vegetables from me. In a few seconds, he’d reduced them down to slices, tossed them in along with the onions and celery. He pulled a container of some white powder, sprinkled it on top.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the container.

  “Flour.” He stirred the vegetables as they sizzled, and I couldn’t resist taking a deep breath of their delicious smell. “Can you open the red wine for me?”

  “Eventually,” I said as I turned the corkscrew, “I’d like to have an online shop set up, with orders able to be sent out anywhere. People could choose their favorite pieces from a standard set, or they could commission you for custom pieces. You choose which orders you want to accept, of course.”

  “Big plans.” He added the chicken to the pan, increasing the level of sizzling noise in the kitchen. He watched it for a minute, then poured in both the chicken stock and the red wine, filling the pan until the cut-up breasts were almost submerged. He added a couple dried herbs from a cabinet, and then set a lid over the saucepan, lowering the level of heat.

  “Well?” I asked, annoyed that he hadn’t yet said anything. What did he have to lose? Why not let me help him?

  “I’m still thinking about it.” He retrieved plates, glasses, poured two splashes of the same red wine. He held one glass out to me, and I eyed it suspiciously.

  “I thought this was for cooking, not drinking.”

  “I just didn’t want you finishing it all off before I got a chance to put it to use with the chicken.” He smirked at me, held out the glass.

  “And you could enter some competitions, raise your profile to drive more traffic to the store,” I went on, taking a sip of the offered wine. “I found a few that are starting in the next couple months, and could help put together some applications-“

  “No,” he snapped, his voice suddenly devoid of any mirth.

  That made me stop. “What?”

  “No competitions. I don’t do them.”

  I frowned. “What, at all?”

  He sighed, glared at me as if he hated even having to explain this. “Look, I’m fine with people judging me on other stuff – but not my art. Not in a competition. I don’t enter any, and I never will. Got it?”

  “Yes, okay, I got it,” I answered, surprised by his anger over such a seemingly inconsequential little point.

  Rick sighed, shook his head, then stepped away from the counter. “Come on, we’ve got a little while until the chicken’s done.”

  I didn’t want to lose my chance to close the deal. “Are we going to get started on picking out some pieces to showcase?” I asked as we left the kitchen.

  He shook his head. “We’re going to see what’s on television.”

  I nearly snapped at him that this wasn’t a constructive use of time, but held my tongue. I needed to win him over to my side - and yelling at him wouldn’t accomplish that goal. Instead, I just took a deep breath, settled down on the edge of the couch, wine glass clasped in both hands on my lap.

  Holding the remote, Rick snuck an amused look at me. “Do you ever relax?”

  “I am relaxed,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Sure doesn’t look like it.”

  I took another deep breath, tried to settle myself a little deeper on the couch cushions. “I’ve just got a lot of irons in the fire right now, and I can’t afford to relax.”

  “Really? Because I relax plenty, and I’m in a pretty good situation.”

  “You’re barely making enough money from your artwork to pay your bills,” I snapped without thinking.

  Thankfully, he didn’t seem to take any offense. “I’m the one with a house, where you’re currently staying.”

  “Because mine burned down,” I pointed out, my exasperation rising. “Look, I’m offering you help. For free. I don’t know why this is such a sticking point for you.”

  He was silent at that – did he not have an answer, or did he not want to share? Instead, he picked up the remote from the coffee table, pointed it at the television on the other side of the room.

  I sat there for five minutes, trying to contain myself as he flipped through channels, before I couldn’t hold back my outburst any longer. “Come on, just give me an answer!”

  This time, when he slowly looked over at me, his eyes again sparkled with amusement. “Are you always this highly strung? I gotta say, it’s exhausting.”

  “I’m not high-strung,” I countered. “I just care about what I accomplish, and I have actual goals. I don’t just laze my way through life, drifting along without caring about success in anything.”

  “I have success when I need it, but I also know how to take a breath and relax.” He watched me, that twinkle still in his eyes. I found it exceedingly irritating, like he mistakenly believed that he held some advantage over me. “What do you do to relax, then?”

  I opened my mouth, but paused, unsure of an answer. What did I do to relax? Most of the time, when I got home from work, I had to busy myself with errands, keeping my house in shape. By the time I finished everything, I usually barely had time for anything beyond a glass of wine and a couple pages of the current book on my nightstand before nodding off to sleep.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, after a second of my silence. “Pretty sad state of affairs for you, isn’t it, Ellie? Not having any hobbies or ways to relax?”

  “Don’t call me Ellie,” I snapped at him. “And I do have hobbies. I read books.”

  I prayed that he wouldn’t call my bluff on-

  “What’s the last book you finished?”

  It had been a primer on career advancement for women in the tech world, written by a prominent female Chief Operating Officer, and I’d kept a notepad next to me to jot down notes that I wanted to incorporate into my own business practices. Somehow, I doubted that Rick would see this as relaxing. “A ver
y steamy romance,” I lied.

  Wrong move. His eyebrows climbed with interest. “Oh really? Sounds a bit like you’re trying to make do with a lack of the real thing, huh? No man around to help you work through some of that tension?”

  I gave him my best, most withering glare. “It was a gay romance. Still interested?”

  “Depends,” he said, grinning. “We talking about a couple guys, or a couple girls going at it?”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “Nah, I’m just comfortable with where I am in life,” he said, standing up from the armchair. “Comfortable enough to not need to lie to a stranger about the last book I read, just to try and win an argument.”

  Despite my efforts to clamp down on my emotions, I felt heat rising into my cheeks. “How did you know – I didn’t say that I’m lying.”

  He just smirked at me before stepping out from behind the coffee table, heading for the kitchen.

  I chased after him, intending on trying to shore up this debate, which I didn’t fully understand but still felt as though I was losing. When I entered the kitchen, however, I found Rick lifting the lid off the saucepan with the chicken, vegetables, and wine sauce – and the smell hit me like a half-brick, driving other thoughts out of my head as my mouth suddenly filled with saliva.

  “Mmm, that smells good,” Rick said, voicing my own internal thoughts. “Grab a bowl from that cupboard, would you? I’ll give you a serving.”

  Rick had a couple of high chairs at a small table in the kitchen, but he headed out to drop heavily down onto his sofa, bowl of steaming chicken and vegetables in one hand, glass of wine in the other. I followed him, my own bowl of hot, delicious smelling food in hand, debating whether I wanted to continue trying to defend my point, or if I could take a few minutes to feed my empty and complaining stomach. My stomach won out, and I speared a piece of succulent, moist chicken with a fork as soon as I dropped into a chair.

  “I think I’ve got a deal,” Rick said, a minute later.

  I looked up at him, my mouth full of too-hot food that was too delicious for me to stop stuffing into my face. “Whah?” I got out around the soft chicken, the vegetables coated in that delicious sauce.

  “I’ll let you help with my business for two months, or until you move out,” he said. My spine straightened, but he held up a finger to forestall any response. “But it’s not free. In exchange, you have to accept my help.”

  “Your help for what?”

  That smirk was back on his face. “You’re the most uptight person I’ve ever met, bar none. So I’m going to try and help you unwind.”

  “No sex,” I warned him, pointing my fork towards his crotch. “Not interested.”

  “Pity – that would be easiest.” He laughed. “But I’ll settle for methods that involve keeping most of your clothes on. But you have to go along with it, let me try and pull that stick out of your ass.”

  “I don’t have-“ I stopped, growled a little as I forced my mouth shut. “Why am I agreeing to do something for you, in exchange for the privilege of helping you?”

  “Because I don’t especially want your help,” he countered. “And that’s the deal. You try to improve my business without adding a ton of work onto my to-do list, and I’ll try to make you loosen up and let a little tension out of your muscles once in a while.” He held out his hand to me. “Deal?”

  It was a terrible deal, and I ought to turn him down. I didn’t need to help Rick. I could find myself plenty of other hobbies to occupy my time as I waited to hear back from other businesses, waited to get a new job. I didn’t need to take on any of this.

  But in my head, I’d already started brainstorming potential solutions to fixing some of Rick’s problems, to getting his name and work out there, to making improvements on his nonexistent business plan. I could feel this project’s hooks locked firmly in my skin and knew that it wouldn’t be so easy to pull free.

  Besides, what harm would it do, letting Rick try and find some method of relaxing me, just for a little while? I wouldn’t be staying here forever. Once I got my severance check, my insurance check, and a new job, I’d be free. Whatever annoyances he suggested, I could get through them, knowing that an end date lay close ahead.

  I accepted the hand offered to me from this man, my new and temporary roommate, landlord, prime spot of irritation in my life.

  “Deal.”

  He smiled. “Great. Then let’s get started, right away.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Eileen

  * * *

  “So, are you going to tell me what this movie is about?” I asked, half an hour later, as Rick returned from the kitchen bearing his spoils in both hands. “Or will that ruin some plot twist?”

  “I can’t believe that you’ve never seen Die Hard before,” Rick said, shaking his head. “Have you just been living under a rock for all your life? Were your parents Amish and refused to let you ever look at a TV?”

  “Lay off,” I said, reaching up to grab a handful of popcorn from the bowl. “I just didn’t watch a lot of movies as a kid. When was I supposed to see this?”

  “On television, staying up too late!” he said, as I crunched on the popcorn. “Or in college, although it takes half a dozen viewings to really understand it, because you’re too distracted by making out with the guy who invited you! Or any of the million times that it’s on television!”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Some of us actually had to study for school, do homework, instead of blowing it all off and skating through. Isn’t that what you did?”

  “No comment,” he answered, settling down on the sofa beside me. “But trust me, it’s an amazing movie, and your life is worse off for having never seen it. It’s got Bruce Willis as John McClane, and he’s fighting terrorists! It’s the best Christmas movie ever made.”

  “Wait, hold on. A Christmas movie?” I looked back down at the cover art on the DVD case, which Rick had handed to me after popping the movie into the player. “How is this a Christmas movie?”

  “Because it happens at Christmas, and Willis delivers punishments to all the bad children.” I felt Rick’s leg bump against mine as he got settled. He reached back behind us and grabbed a throw blanket that had been half knotted up behind the sofa, draped it over both of our laps. “Trust me, you’ll love it.”

  “How is this supposed to make me relax?”

  He turned towards me, making certain that I could see him rolling his eyes. “First off, it distracts you so that your mouth doesn’t move,” he sighed. “And look, watching movies can be a hobby. You should at least have an appreciation for great cinema.”

  “Great cinema,” I repeated skeptically, tossing the DVD case aside. “Right. This better not just be an excuse for you to get handsy under this blanket.”

  “You know, I hadn’t considered it before, but now that you mention it...” I punched him, making his smirk turn to a wince. “Come on, I was just kidding! Look, I’ll be the perfect gentleman.”

  “Good. Now, pass the bowl of popcorn over.” I grabbed another handful, heedless of how the oil and salt coated my fingertips. “This is great, by the way. What’s on it?”

  “Olive oil, dill weed, and Parmesan cheese. It’s air-popped, so there’s no butter or chemicals from the microwave stuff.” He grabbed a handful for himself, munched contentedly. “Now, be quiet. It’s starting, and I don’t want you interrupting it halfway through to ask me who some character is, just because you haven’t been paying attention.”

  He settled back, and I tried to do the same, trying to let my muscles relax and my mind go blank, just focusing on the action happening on the television. I felt resistance in my head; my brain wanted to get started right away with brainstorming ideas for Rick’s business, now that he’d given me the green light. Already, I had several intriguing ideas, but I still needed to consider how they’d fit together, which order they should follow...

  No! I shook my head, tried to silence all those loud thoughts. I’d agree
d that I would let Rick try and relax me, and even though I privately thought the whole idea was stupid, I’d at least make an effort to go along with things, if only so that he didn’t shoot down my ideas when I proposed them.

  So I kept my attention on the screen, trying to follow the movie. It didn’t seem that amazing, to be honest. From the look of it, the movie was set back in the nineties, and Bruce Willis was playing a police officer who’d come to his wife’s office Christmas party. But there was a bad guy, who I recognized as Alan Rickman, trying to... blow up the building, or something like that? He’d taken them all as hostages, but Bruce Willis had escaped and was now causing trouble for the bad guys.

  I glanced over at Rick, originally intending to ask why Alan Rickman wanted to take over the building at all, but remembered his admonishment against speaking up in the middle of the movie because I hadn’t been paying attention. Instead, I found myself momentarily distracted by his profile, in the semi-darkness of his living room.

  In the dim light, mostly trickling out of the kitchen doorway, Rick’s strong jaw looked especially hard and chiseled, most of his body little more than darkness on the couch, half buried beneath the blanket that covered us both. I still felt his leg bumping lightly against mine, and I wondered if he could feel the heat of my skin like I could sense his.

  Fine – I could admit it, he was attractive. But I still had zero plans of sleeping with him, no matter how physically attractive he might be. I’d been going through a dry spell for a while, now, but I didn’t need to end that drought just because a halfway decent male specimen presented himself.

  Sleeping with Rick would raise all kinds of problems. It would make it tougher for me to propose business solutions to him while still remaining objective. It could throw a wrench into this landlord/tenant relationship that we had now, and it might make it tougher for me to move out when that inevitable time arrived.